Moon - New Moon Part 43

"It's hard to know."

"In my world a man would act sure of himself, even if..."

"Even if he were blowing smoke out his a.s.s."

She gave a bark of a laugh. "I never heard that. But I know what it means."

"Yeah."

"Why do you have the gun?" she asked.

"Because we're out here in the woods. And I want to be prepared. I had it in the tent. Then I moved it to the car when I went out for a run."

"Oh."

"I'll give you shooting lessons after we get home."

"You'd trust me with that thing?"

"Of course. But we should leave. I want to get the plants back home before they dry out."

She leaned back in the seat.

"Fasten your seat belt."

"What is it, and how do I do it?"

"It's to..." He stopped and laughed. "I was about to tell you it's to keep you safe in case I crash the car. But I guess that doesn't sound very rea.s.suring."

"No."

"A crash is unlikely. But a seat belt is a good safety precaution."

He pulled out a strap from some hidden compartment and showed her how to make the two parts click together. Then he showed her how to open it again.

After she hooked the belt, he inserted a key in a metal slot. The car gave a roar that made her grab the handle next to her.

"It's okay," he soothed.

"I don't like it."

He turned toward her, his face serious. "I know it's all strange and new."

When she reached for the door handle, he lifted her hand away. "Don't pull that. It will open the door, and you don't want to do that while we're moving."

She swallowed. "Okay."

"You can put your hand here... or here." He showed her several places where it was okay to hold on.

He must have caught the worried expression on her face because he said, "You'll get used to it."

"You keep saying that," she answered, although she wondered if it was really true. He had grown up with these things. She was as lost as he would have been in the slave quarters of a great house.

Suddenly the car began to move, and she sucked in a breath.

"How are you doing that?"

"With my foot. I press on a pedal to give it fuel."

"Electricity?"

"In this case, liquid fuel called gasoline. Something like the oil you burn in a lamp. But different."

She had almost succeeded in relaxing when Logan drove from the narrow dirt lane into a wider road with a smooth surface like the one from last night. Immediately he speeded up, faster than any carriage could go.

She held on, being careful to touch where he'd showed her.

"It's fast."

"Some guys go faster."

She tried to imagine that. "When I was in school, some of the highborn children brought sleds to school for the winter months. A few times they let me slide down a hill in the snow."

"Did you like it?"

"Yes. It was fast. And the wind whipped past my head. This is like that, but the gla.s.s keeps the wind away."

"We can have a little wind effect." He reached to press a b.u.t.ton, and the gla.s.s panel above her head slid back.

She dragged in a sharp breath, and he closed it again.

To distract herself, she asked, "Is your house like the place where we spent the night?"

"No. That was kitschy colonial. Mine is werewolf modern."

"What does that mean?"

"We tend to like the rustic look. One of my brothers is a builder, and he constructed it for me."

She wasn't sure what rustic meant, so she tried to relax in the seat as he talked.

Maybe because he saw she was nervous, he kept up a flow of words, telling her about the native plants that he was cultivating and about the work he did designing gardens for people who wanted the ground around their house to look natural but artful.

He had said he was in a hurry to get home, so when he pulled to the gravel at the side of the blacktop road in the middle of nowhere, she looked up in alarm.

"Sorry. Just a second," he apologized as he climbed out and picked up several large rocks that had fallen from a cliff above them. After putting them on the floor behind them, he drove away again.

"What are you doing?"